Find the Right People to Help (Influence and Change 6 of 10)
Posted by Tim on May 16, 2011
Do the people you enlist for support help or hurt your cause?
Humans are inherently social creatures, which can work to the advantage of the aspiring influencer.
Change often involves ambiguity, especially at first. As people move away from tried-and-true behaviors, they often become less confident in what they are doing.
When we are less than certain about the correct behavior in a given situation, we tend to look to others for queues for our own actions. This means that behavioral modeling can be a tremendous resource. Get a few key people to start using the desired key behaviors, and others will likely follow.
But can this backfire if not done correctly?
Any effort involving change typically follows a normal bell curve in terms of adoption.
Although our initial inclination might be to try to leverage the innovators group to influence a faster adoption rate, this is typically ineffective. Research shows that using innovators to garner support usually doesn’t work, and can even be counter-productive, likely because innovators are viewed as too different from the overall population to be influential models for the desired key behaviors. People won’t buy into messages if they don’t believe or trust the messenger(s) (“I don’t care if Bob says it works – he’s always trying the newest snake oil”)
Instead, smart influencers tap the second group, early adopters. This group is typically viewed as smart, connected (in terms of relationships), and – most importantly – credible. This is the group to target if you want to use modeling to influence the larger population.
(1 of 10) Decrypting the “Impact Gene”
(2 of 10) Find the Behaviors that Matter
(3 of 10) Communicate Key Behaviors
(5 or 10) Building Necessary Capabilities
